Entrepreneurship

Jane Nelson and Sarah Thorn will discussstrategies to grow women’s entrepreneurship worldwide, with a particular emphasis on the role of the private sector. They will address the importance of public-private partnerships to train female entrepreneurs and facilitate the integration of women-owned businesses into global supply chains. This meeting is part of a high-level series on women and development, generously sponsored by the ExxonMobil Foundation.

Born in 1954 in Wales to Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, Michael Moritz attended Howardian High School in Cardiff and studied history at Christ Church, Oxford. After college, he moved to the United States, getting an MBA from Wharton and then working as a reporter for Time.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon argues that with the help of the private and public sector, women entrepreneurs are helping to combat global poverty, but more work is needed to overcome the challenges of access to finance, access to markets, and access to skills-building and networks.

Markus Goldstein from the World Bank and Agnes Quisumbing from the International Food Policy Research Institute reference years of research and field work in an exploration of what we know, and more importantly, what we don't know about what works for women's economic empowerment.

Renewing America

In the face of persistently high unemployment, policymakers and workers look to innovation and entrepreneurship to create new jobs. This Backgrounder discusses how entrepreneurs create and finance the startups that power U.S. job growth, and the ramifications of policies such as the JOBS Act.

Jose W. Fernandez, assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs, speaks about the State Department's work in North Africa, with a focus on fostering entrepreneurship, building public-private partnerships, and stamping out corruption.

Economic growth stimulated by small and medium-sized enterprises can foster stability in fragile states. Comprehensive approaches that offer entrepreneurs access to finance, markets, networks, and skills should be offered.

Shari Berenbach, director of the Microenterprise Development Office at USAID, details how the agency promotes entrepreneurship in conflict and developing regions by empowering and encouraging women to manage their own small- and medium-sized businesses.

This meeting was part of the Roundtable Series on Entrepreneurs and Market Linkages.